


The Inside Man

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Kevin, Body Horror, Episode: s09e01 I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here, Fallen Angels, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Kevin Tran, Hurt Sam Winchester, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Mental Health Issues, Paranoia, Possession, Thoughts of Self-harm, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-9.02.  Sam and Kevin have both been suffering from memory loss since the Trials ended, and Dean is acting strangely.  Sam suspects a supernatural cause, but Kevin's not so sure either one of them has a firm grasp on reality.  Or: another way the Ezekiel arc could have played out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inside Man

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This was written for the [SPN Reverse Bang](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/), and inspired by [Sagetan's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sagetan/pseuds/sagetan) [beautiful art](http://sagetan.livejournal.com/29722.html). Kelisab made an [additional, fantastic piece](http://kelisab.tumblr.com/post/85424227384/you-okay-sam-says-sure-the-wind-is-so-cold).
> 
> 2\. The story diverges from canon after 9.02, although it includes some of the events from 9.03. It assumes a few weeks passed between those episodes, though, rather than the handful of days that seems more likely in canon.
> 
> 3\. I'm so grateful to the_diggler for acting as beta. Her insightful and funny comments were incredibly helpful in thinking about the characters' motivations and sorting out the plot. Thanks are also due to the mods of the challenge for making it possible.

There’s no clock in Kevin’s bedroom.  He doesn’t think in terms of hours anymore.  Or days, really.  What’s the difference between 3pm and 3am when you don’t have a window?  He works on the tablet until he can’t, sustained by cheap trucker speed, then curls up to sleep in his elaborately warded closet: demon sigils, angel sigils, every protective symbol the bunker’s library can provide him with, along with a selection of knives the Winchesters won’t miss.  He doesn’t feel safe in there, but it’s as close as he gets.

When Kevin’s too tired to work and too wired to sleep, he goes to the library.  Most of the books are in languages he can’t read, but the long shelves and the smell of old paper remind him of lazy Saturdays spent in the public library, when he’d read whole books sitting on the floor of the aisle.  He figures there are probably a half dozen first editions of the _Necronomicon_ buried in the stacks, silently festering with evil, but it still feels friendlier than any other part of this grim museum.

Some mornings he wakes up there, slumped over a table or crumpled at the foot of a bookshelf, even though he doesn’t remember leaving his room.  These memory lapses don’t worry him much, though. He wakes up on the floor next to his desk from time to time, too, just as he did back on the houseboat. He’s pretty sure that reading the tablet causes mild strokes—or seizures maybe?  He’s not clear on the difference—and he falls out of his chair.  Maybe sometimes when he’s disoriented he wanders around the bunker and then keels over.  It makes as much sense as anything else.    

*******************************************************************************************************

“You want to go for a run?” Sam says.  He’s peering around the door of Kevin’s room, all dressed up in sweat pants, a hoodie, and a pair of running shoes, like he’s auditioning for an exercise video.

Kevin side-eyes him.  Sam likes to run in the mornings, but he’s never asked Kevin to come along before.  Hell, they barely talk.  Like car maintenance and kitchen cleaning, Kevin’s a responsibility Sam’s delegated to Dean.

Kevin feels the automatic irritation that any interruption of his translation provokes.  “No.  I’m busy.  And I don’t like running.”

Sam looks nonplussed, like it hadn’t occurred to him that Kevin might say no.  “We don’t have to run.  I just thought you might like to get outside for a few minutes.”

“I thought you guys said it wasn’t safe.”  Kevin’s not sure why he’s being difficult about this.  He hasn’t been outside in weeks.  ‘Pain-in-the-ass’ is just his default position these days.

“It’s the middle of the woods, and I’ll be with you. I think you’ll be okay for half an hour.”

Kevin shrugs, but he gets up.  It takes him fifteen minutes and some help from Sam to track down his only pair of shoes.  He hasn’t had a reason to wear them since he got to the bunker. 

When they step out the front door Kevin is instantly blinded.  He’d forgotten how much brighter the sun is than a lamp.  He shades his eyes with one arm and keeps his gaze fixed on the leaf-litter beneath his feet.

“You okay?” Sam says.

“Sure.”  The wind is so cold it knifes right through him, but it feels sweet anyway, like the thrill of jumping into an icy river on a hot day.  The smell of wood smoke and dead leaves calls up the phantom taste of apple cider.  The season has changed while he was underground.

They crunch through the fallen leaves in awkward silence for a while.  Kevin doesn’t have anything to talk about because he doesn’t do anything except translate the tablet.  At sixteen he’d been shy and overly earnest, stumbling through locker room banter like everyone else had been handed a script he’d missed out on.  He’d been more comfortable talking with his mom’s friends than kids his own age.  And then he’d spent two years alone.  Whatever people skills he’d once had are shot to hell.  He manages okay with Dean because he’s learned all he has to do is bring up Metallica or _Dr. Sexy_ and Dean’s got enough material to monologue indefinitely.  Kevin doesn’t have to do anything more taxing than offer the occasional “wow,” or “Nurse Carol’s a real bitch.”  He hasn’t found the right key words to trigger that response from Sam.      

The woods are beautiful but unnerving.  He suspects there’s a demon behind every tree.  Sam seems so completely unconcerned that it worries Kevin more.  The Winchesters are never as scared as they should be.  He keeps stepping on the edge of Sam’s shoe, and he’s not sure if he’s walking so close because he believes Sam can protect him, or because he feels like he needs to protect Sam.

“How have you been doing?” Sam says finally.  Kevin has learned to hate that question.  He’s supposed to tell Sam his feelings in a sincere and constructive way for five minutes and then let Sam give him some sage advice, so that when Sam gets down to the real business of asking for whatever it is he wants from Kevin he doesn’t have to feel guilty.  Fuck that.

“Well, I live in a steel coffin, I’m pretty sure reading the tablets is eating a hole in my brain, and either my mom got gutted a couple of months ago or she’s still getting tortured right now.  So all things considered I’m fan-fucking-tastic.”

“If we could find her . . .” Sam begins.  Kevin knows in his heart that his mother’s dead.  If she were alive Crowley would be trying to trade her for his freedom.  He’s not, so she isn’t. But Kevin still resents how easily the Winchesters decided there was nothing they could do.  They’d run off to save some hunter friend Kevin had never heard them mention before, but Kevin’s only family was too much trouble.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it would be your top priority.  Just like finding me was.”

Sam winces and Kevin instantly feels guilty.  He can never decide whether he wants to yell at the Winchesters or convince them to like him.  He feels like he mostly fails at both.   

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Kevin says.  “But I really don’t want to talk about my feelings.  Let’s skip the foreplay and get to why we’re out here.” 

“I can’t just be interested in how you are?” Sam sounds genuinely hurt, and he’s also lying.  

“The most you’ve said to me in the past two weeks is ‘when did you eat all my protein bars?’”

Sam sighs.  “And here I thought I was being subtle. Okay, fine.  I wanted to ask you whether you’d noticed anything weird lately.”

“I’m a prophet of the Lord who lives in a bunker built by wizards that has the king of Hell locked up in a torture chamber in the basement.  You need to be more specific.”

Sam’s quiet for so long Kevin wonders if the conversation is over.  “I’m not sure I can be,” he says finally. “I just feel like something’s off.  Dean says he didn’t take me to the hospital when I passed out at the church, that he drove around with me riding shotgun unconscious for a whole day.  Who the hell would do that?”

Kevin nods.  He’d already known that story was bullshit.  He’d just assumed Sam was in on it.  “And this last hunt I got knocked out,” Sam says. “When I woke up Dean told me he’d killed three demons by himself. No one’s that strong.”  Sam hangs his head and his ridiculously eighties, heavy-metal-band hair hides his face from scrutiny.  

“So,” Kevin says when Sam doesn’t seem inclined to keep talking, “you think what exactly?”

“Nothing.  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m . . .”  Sam trails off and Kevin wonders what the rest of that sentence was meant to be.  “Can you keep this between us?”

Kevin wasn’t planning to tell Dean about this conversation—he doesn’t give up information he doesn’t need to—but now that it’s put to him as a secret he’s uncomfortable.  He doesn’t entirely believe Dean’s speech about family, but he believes Dean cared about him enough to tell him the lies he needed to hear in the moment, and that’s something.  Dean came back from town with an Xbox afterward, and Kevin knows it’s mostly for him.  They’ve played Skyrim a couple of times.  Dean’s the closest thing he’s got to a friend.

“I don’t know, man.  I don’t want to get into the middle of some Winchester family drama.”

“No, no you won’t,” Sam says.  There’s an edge of desperation to his voice that tells Kevin it’s not true.  “I just need a few days to sort some things out, okay?”

“Yeah, I guess.  I’m not a narc.”  Besides, running to Dean with whatever vague suspicions Sam’s got would probably just end with both brothers turning on him. 

Kevin’s never been out in these woods before, and he realizes abruptly they’ve come full circle and are approaching the bunker from the other side.  His heart sinks.  He feels like a dog that’s seen its crate.

“One condition,” Kevin says.  “I want to go on a walk again tomorrow.  I want outside time every day.”     

Sam looks at him like he’s just bargained for the right to breathe air.  “Yeah, of course.  I’d have taken you outside whenever you wanted.”  Kevin doesn’t know how he was supposed to know that.

“Well, then, it won’t be a problem.”  He steps past Sam into the entryway of the bunker.   

To Kevin’s surprise Sam keeps his promise.  For the next couple of weeks Sam comes by Kevin’s bedroom every morning and collects him unprompted.  Sam starts the walks chipper and talkative, only to run out of things to say halfway through and lapse into brooding silence.  It’s so odd that Kevin initially assumes Sam’s still digging for information and shuts him down at every turn.  After a couple of days, though, he starts to suspect that this is just Sam’s attempt to be likable—a halfhearted apology for his past indifference.  Kevin takes pity and tries to be likable back at him, but neither of them is very good at it and the conversation dies even more painfully than before.  Sam looks sad and worried in the silence that follows their daily failure, haunted by something Kevin doesn’t understand.

Kevin is grateful for his time outside, in spite of the social awkwardness that accompanies it.  He didn’t know how much he’d missed the sun until he saw it again.  He feels healthy and awake after their walks, even without the benefit of Dean’s little green pills.  Daylight seems to reset his internal clock:  he comes back to the bunker hungry for breakfast, and sleeps more easily at night.    

After the first few days Kevin stops stepping on Sam’s feet.  Nothing bad has happened.  There really isn’t a demon behind every tree.  After a couple of weeks he thinks he might be strong enough to go into town soon. If he had Sam with him he might be able to brave a coffee shop.  Maybe even a grocery store.

“Hey,” Kevin says as the bunker comes into view, “I know I kind of strong-armed you into this, but it’s not that bad, right?  It’s kind of nice.” 

After a long moment Sam looks up from his thoughts like a man waking from a dream.  “Yeah, yeah, it’s good.”  He doesn’t sound like he’s lying, but he doesn’t sound like he’s listening either.  He’s lost in whatever it is that’s been weighing on his mind.

*******************************************************************************************************

Kevin tosses and turns on the floor of his carefully warded closet.  His mind shows him an endless reel of severed limbs, scarlet smoke, and his mother’s broken body.  He drinks from his emergency whiskey until the world spins like a merry-go-round he can’t get off, but it only makes the images harder to control.  Behind his eyes it’s all blood-gore-pain-fear—the feel of a finger bone as it snaps under a knife, the stinking spatter of human meat on his face when Crowley blew up some poor prophet-to-be, the too-bright smiles of demons dressed up as Sam and Dean that Kevin forced himself to smile back at for weeks and weeks.  

He feels like he’s going to throw up, or scream, or die.  Instead he makes a weaving path toward the library.  Neither of the Winchesters sleeps much.  He might find someone to distract him there.  He comes upon Sam suddenly as he turns the corner around a shelf of Latin spell books.  Sam’s back is to him and he’s hunched over a text, flipping the pages too fast to be reading.

“Hey, what did you find?” Kevin says softly. 

Sam turns, and his eyes flash an unearthly blue.  Not Sam.  Crowley?  Kevin has no time to decide.  His muscles freeze with the blank terror that hits in the moment before death.

He wakes up on the floor of the library with a splitting headache and no idea how he got there.  It’s pretty much par for the course.  He stumbles automatically toward the kitchen.

“Jesus, what happened to you?” Sam asks, appearing out of nowhere.

“I’m fine,” Kevin says.  Sam is all over him before he makes it to the sink, cradling Kevin’s face in his massive hands.

 “Why are you bleeding?” Kevin doesn’t know what Sam’s talking about, but when he looks down at his shirt he sees a dark stain.

“I get nosebleeds all the time.  Chill out.”  Kevin hasn’t looked into a mirror yet, but his mouth tastes like copper.  He pulls out of Sam’s grasp, makes his way to the sink, and splashes warm water on his face until he figures it’s reasonably clean.   

“What happened?” Sam asks again while Kevin is wiping his face on the dish towel.

“I told you,” Kevin says.  He doesn’t entirely appreciate Sam’s concern.  He doesn’t want to be Sam’s pet project. 

Kevin still has his back to Sam, but he hears an impatient huff.  “Humor me.  Walk me through it.”

“Fine,” Kevin says, and doesn’t turn around.  “I got really drunk last night, and then I woke up on the floor of the library with a nosebleed.  And then you started pawing me.  The end.”

Sam is silent for so long that Kevin gives in and turns to face him.  Sam’s lost in thought, like Kevin has given him the key to cracking a case instead of the description of his average Tuesday night.

“Was I there too?  Did you see me before you passed out?”  Sam sounds eager.  Hopeful. 

“No.  I don’t know.  The last thing I remember is drinking in my room.” 

The words are barely out of Kevin’s mouth when Sam grabs his arm hard enough to bruise and drags him toward the door of the bunker.  “We’re going for a walk.  Right now.”

“Ow, hey!  I need to change.”  Kevin gestures to his bloody shirt.

“No one will see you.”  In the entryway Sam yanks his own coat off the rack and drops it over Kevin’s shoulders before shoving him out the door of the bunker.

Sam continues to crowd in on Kevin when they get outside, hustling him out into the woods. Kevin puts his arms through the coat because it’s fucking cold.  It reaches his knees.  He probably looks ridiculous, but at least he’s not in shirtsleeves like Sam.

“What the hell?” Kevin says.

Sam looks back at the bunker like it might chase them.  “I asked you if there was anything weird going on two weeks ago.  Why didn’t you tell me you were losing time?” 

“Because I’m not.”  Kevin’s genuinely confused.  “I mean, sometimes I have strokes or seizures or whatever and I black out.  You already knew that.  You’ve found me on the floor before, back on the houseboat.  You asked about _weird_.”

Sam takes a deep breath, like he’s restraining the urge to yell.  “Okay,” he says too gently.  “Let’s try this again.  I need you to tell me everything that’s happened since you’ve been in the bunker.  Everything going on with your head.  Whether or not you think it’s weird.  Whether or not you think it’s relevant.”

“No,” Kevin says.  Sam looks at him like he’s a stubborn toddler.  “No,” Kevin says again.  He can’t imagine anything more embarrassing than giving Sam a thorough inventory of the inside of his skull.  He used to pride himself on the military precision of his brain; his whole life was measured out in fifteen minute increments.  Now it’s an ugly swamp of confusion and fear that even his best efforts can’t control.  He sure as hell doesn't want to put it on display for Sam.  “You want to know something specific, I’ll tell you.  But you can’t just shove me out the door and demand I spill my guts.”

Sam lapses into silence.  Kevin trudges through the fallen leaves beside him for a few minutes, waiting for an explanation that doesn’t come.  “What’s the deal?” Kevin says finally.  “Why does it matter if I have blackouts?”

Sam stops and looks Kevin over.  “Can I trust you?  Really trust you?”

Kevin nods automatically.  Honestly he’s not sure it’s a great idea for anyone to trust him with anything these days, but he wants to hear what Sam has to say.

“Right before we met I went through a difficult time.  Personally difficult.”  This isn’t what Kevin expected.  “I, uh, I saw some things that weren’t real, and  . . . it wasn’t good.  I almost died.”  Sam looks away.  “Last night I was doing research in the library.  This morning I woke up in bed.  I don’t know how I got there.  It’s been happening to me more and more lately.”

Sam’s just described how a lot of Kevin’s evenings end.  “If you were drinking . . .”

“Stone cold sober,” Sam says. 

“Yeah, that’s bad.”  Kevin knows as soon as it’s out his mouth it’s a stupid thing to say.

Sam sighs.  “I know.  And I’m not sure if it’s supernatural, or if it’s all in my head.  And the worst part is that sometimes I think . . .”  Sam trails off.  If Kevin’s supposed to be able to fill in the blanks he’s failing miserably.  After a long moment Sam says, “Sometimes I think Dean’s causing it.  I’ve told him I’m losing time over and over again, and he brushes it off.  I said maybe something was playing with me, and he just laughed.  That’s not like Dean.  He should be freaking out.  It’s almost like he knows.  Like he’s in on it.”   Sam’s shoulders hunch, his whole body folding in on itself.  He’s crumbling terrifyingly fast and Kevin doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do about it. 

Sam scrubs his hands over his face.  “God, that sounds really crazy when I say it out loud, doesn’t it?”

It sounds like the inside of Kevin’s head.  So yeah, pretty crazy.  Kevin’s not sure whether he should hope that Sam’s delusional or that something evil’s gotten into the bunker, but either way he wants to help. 

“Look, I really don’t think I know anything.  If I did I’d have told you already.  But, okay, sometimes I wake up on the floor next to my chair.  It started on the houseboat.  And since I came here I’ve woken up in the library a few times, and the kitchen once, without remembering how I got there.  I think I must wander around while I’m out of it.  So yeah, I guess you can say I lose time.” 

Kevin keeps his eyes on the ground.  It’s not his fault his brain is fried, not exactly, but it’s still a form of failure.  He imagines how disappointed his mother would be by the mess he’s become. He takes a deep breath.  “Okay, so sometimes Dean seems off to me.  But sometimes so do you.  Sometimes I worry none of this is real.   Like, maybe I never made it off Crowley’s fake houseboat, and you’re just a demon pretending to be Sam.  I’ve slipped you both holy water a few times and nothing happened, but holy water didn’t work on the demons in the fake houseboat either.  Um, let’s see, sometimes I see things out of the corner of my eye when I work on the tablet for too long—birds, pine cones, Christmas lights.  My cat, Smoky, who died when I was twelve.  But I know they’re not real.  It’s just sleep deprivation.”  And the uppers he takes by the handful probably, but Kevin’s afraid if he suggests they’re part of the problem the Winchesters will take them away.  “No violent hallucinations since I got here, no dismemberments or anything.  I haven’t seen Crowley for a couple of months.  I mean, the one in my head.  Obviously I’ve seen the real one.  I think that’s everything.”  Kevin feels defiant so he doesn’t have to feel ashamed.  “Any of it useful?”   

 “Jesus,” Sam says.  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Sam looks more worried than he needs to be, and it makes Kevin feel defensive.  “About what?  I’m fine.  If I really believed you were a demon I wouldn’t have told you all that.  It’s just a thought I’ve had.  You said you wanted everything. I’m trying to help you.”     

Sam puts his hands up.  “Okay, okay.  Thank you for that.  Really.”

“So, what do think?  Are we crazy or is something happening to us?”

“They’re not mutually exclusive.”  Sam smiles ruefully.  “But it seems unlikely we’d both lose time if it’s all in our heads, doesn’t it?  And it seems _really_ unlikely we’d both lose time in the library on the same night.  I think maybe something’s screwing with us both.”  Sam says it like he’s reassuring Kevin.  He looks relieved now that he’s got a case to solve. 

Kevin is terrified.  He’d far rather hear his mind is playing tricks on him than hear that something has come to take him again.  Or has already taken him.  His memory was edited on the fake houseboat so many times the edges started to fray and peel back to reveal what was hidden underneath.  If he’s losing time again . . . Kevin looks at the woods and wonders how large a fake reality can get.  The bunker seems like it would be easy, but a whole forest?  If he went into town would that prove conclusively this is real?  Maybe Crowley could invent a whole world’s worth of scenery to scroll by while Kevin’s stuck on a treadmill. 

Sam has to be Sam, though, right?  Why would a demon tip Kevin off?

“I want you to run through all the tests,” Kevin says.  “Salt, silver, everything.  Right now.  If there’s anything sketchy here I need to be a hundred percent sure of you.”

“Sure,” Sam says.  “That’s smart.”  When they get back to the bunker they stand in the kitchen while Sam obligingly runs through every test Kevin can think of:  salt, silver, holy water, borax, iron.  He even raps out the secret knock Kevin used on the houseboat.  Demon Sam had never been able to do that.

When Kevin’s satisfied he rolls up his sleeve and offers his arm to Sam.  “I guess you’ll want to check me too.”

Sam looks sheepish. “I did that a week ago.  You’re clean.  You and Dean both.”

Kevin leans back against the counter, which is probably real, and bumps his shoulder against Sam, who definitely is.

“Now what? You really think Dean’s doing something to us?”

“No,” Sam says quickly, and then, “Yeah, maybe.  It started after the church, when I was so sick.  Dean does crazy things for me sometimes.”

Kevin nods, although he doesn’t know what Sam’s talking about.  Sam and Dean have explained to Kevin in general terms that God is AWOL and the angels are dicks who tried to stage an apocalypse only to have the Winchesters stop them at the last minute.  The world isn’t ending anymore but Heaven and Hell are still fucked up.  Thus the incredible shit show that is Kevin’s life. 

Kevin knows that’s a heavily edited version of the truth, but he hasn’t entirely pieced together what’s missing.  The closest he’s gotten to a lead was that time Garth drank two wine coolers and told him, “Sam was the devil for a while.  But hell, nobody’s perfect.”  Kevin can’t even imagine what game of hunter telephone resulted in “Sam was the devil,” though, and he takes everything Garth says with a grain of salt. 

“For now we should just lay low,” Sam says.  “See what happens.”  He sounds calm and efficient.  This must be what he’s like when he’s on a case. 

“Okay,” Kevin says.  “I’ll tell you when I black out.  But I’m warning you, it may be a lot.”  He’s still not entirely convinced his blackouts are related to anything supernatural, and he wants desperately to believe they aren’t.  Dean is his friend, and the blackouts started months ago, long before Crowley took him from the houseboat.  But he’s warmed by the idea of helping Sam, of being important and trusted.  He’s willing to narrate the sad end of all his drinking binges if it makes him worth listening to. 

Sam lays his hand on the back of Kevin’s neck, warm and familiar. The last person to touch him like that was his mother.  It’s been so long since someone’s hands were on him that it feels alien, and he’s tempted to flinch away. “I’ll tell you, too,” Sam says.  “We’ll figure this out together.”  

*******************************************************************************************************

Nothing happens. 

Kevin puts a clock in his bedroom and stares at it by the hour when he’s supposed to be translating.  The second hand never skips a single tick.  At night when he hears Sam and Dean go to bed his fear feels ancient and familiar:  _the grownups are asleep and there’s a monster in the house_.  No matter how bitter his insomnia is he doesn’t leave the safety of his warded closet to rummage through the library or the kitchen.  Every morning he wakes up just where he lay down.

Sam grills him on their walks, asking in a dozen different ways whether Kevin has seen anything.  He hasn’t.  Neither has Sam.  It’s good news as far as Kevin’s concerned—he prefers the tension before the sword drops to getting his head chopped off—but he can tell Sam’s disappointed.  It’s not a case if there’s no evidence.

Kevin starts bringing his tablet out to the main library more often.  His bedroom is too far from human company, and the faint electrical hum of the bunker twists around in his head until it takes on the rhythm of breath, or the rise and fall of whispers just beyond earshot.  Dean is friendly whenever he sees Kevin there; he seems pleased Kevin isn’t hiding in his room 24/7 anymore.  He makes conversation about TV shows Kevin doesn’t watch and sports Kevin doesn’t understand, or tries to convince Kevin to play video games with him. 

Dean’s behavior is touching, and it creeps Kevin out.  Dean was never this nice back when Kevin was on the houseboat.  He’s as friendly now as Demon Dean was in Crowley’s Matrix.  Kevin shuts him down, even though he feels bad about it.  What if Sam’s paranoid, and Dean is innocent?  Maybe Dean’s friendlier now because he’s got an awesome steampunk mansion, cool friends, and an implausibly healthy brother.  Maybe the only thing different about Dean is that he’s happy, and Kevin’s spoiling it for him by being a massive dick. 

He watches the Winchesters interact out of the corner of his eye every chance he gets, head down over the tablet like he’s too engrossed in his work to notice they’re there.  He doesn’t learn anything worth knowing, except that Sam is an excellent liar.  Sam rolls his eyes at Dean’s jokes, gestures excitedly at ancient texts, and sips his coffee calmly while Dean talks about the Fairy Court.  If you didn’t know Sam suspected his brother was plotting against him, you’d never guess.

As soon as Dean is out of visual range, off in the library stacks looking at vintage porn or in his room sadly playing Skyrim alone, Sam unravels.  He’s a restless ball of miserable energy, reading Latin texts while slamming them around like they’ve personally wronged him, until he finally gets so frustrated he paces around behind Kevin’s back, flickering in and out of Kevin’s peripheral vision like a neurotic goldfish. 

Occasionally he gets it into his head to hover over Kevin and offer helpful suggestions about reading the tablet.  It makes Kevin want to punch him in his earnest face.  Kevin doesn’t want other people touching the tablet.  He doesn’t even want them looking at it.  He can’t explain why he feels that way, and sometimes he suspects it’s not coming from him at all.  The tablet has a will of its own.  It called him to it, and it doesn’t like to share.  He doesn’t know anymore where Gollum stops and the ring begins, but he’s damn well sure he doesn’t want Sam horning in on the only thing left in the world that truly belongs to him.

Other times, Sam asks Kevin for help with one of the books he’s working on, and that’s something Kevin’s happy to do.  He was president of the Latin Club, and he takes pride in showing off for Sam.  It makes him feel competent and useful.  Besides, while Kevin’s not especially fascinated by Medieval scholarship on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (answer: a whole fucking lot), Sam seems excited to share it.  It feels like a group project in AP History.

Sam gets distracted before Kevin does, worry creeping back in between the lines of Latin.  He finds excuses for them to take breaks and watch TV together.  Kevin’s okay with that.  He’s too fried to follow the plots of the dramas reliably, but he likes the feeling of someone sitting next to him, utterly wrapped up in a foreign world.  He yells at the laptop when Sam does and means it, even when he’s not entirely sure who’s been shot or why it matters. 

The only thing Kevin flatly refuses to watch with Sam is the _Daily Show_.  All the major American politicians have been replaced by leviathan, and Kevin finds them unnerving.  He can’t quite say when it happened.  He didn’t have access to television the first time he was Crowley’s hostage, and after he escaped he spent months hiding out in abandoned houses.  When he finally saw a TV in a skeevy internet café in Iowa it was tuned to CNN.  Everyone on screen had terrible white smiles and dead eyes.  He’d realized then it had been inevitable that the remnant of the leviathan would take over Washington.  They craved power.  Jon Stewart is still human as far as Kevin can tell.  He looks clueless, and Kevin hopes he is.  He’s always liked Jon Stewart.  He prays when the poor bastard gets eaten he doesn’t know what hit him.

As the days drag on without incident Sam gets more restless, until even streaming TV shows can’t hold his attention.  One day in the middle of what Kevin feels pretty sure is _Downton Abbey_ Sam abruptly announces that Kevin needs to learn how to play poker “as a life skill” and produces a deck of cards from a locked drawer.

Kevin is willing, but he doesn’t enjoy it as much as he thinks he will.  There’s too much math involved, too many complicated combinations of cards to memorize.  He knows that his sixteen-year-old self would have been brilliant at it, but he’s lost something essential in the past two years.  Whether it’s IQ points or simple concentration he lacks he doesn’t know, but he gets angrier every time Sam explains the value of a hand in entirely reasonable terms that flow in one ear and out the other.  He misses the person he used to be.  He feels stupid.

They’re in the middle of a game when Sam gently grabs his wrist and takes his cards away from him.  Kevin’s frustration must have been more obvious than he wanted it to be.

“But the game . . .” Kevin says.    

“We’ll try again later.”  Sam shuffles Kevin’s cards into the deck.  “When I was twelve I wanted to be a magician,” he says.  “I had a cape and everything.  I drove Dean crazy.  Pick a card.”

Kevin does.  “Okay,” Sam says.  “You’ve got it memorized?  Put it back in the deck.”  Sam shuffles with the remarkable dexterity of years as a card sharp, long fingers flying, but Kevin can still see how the edge of his thumb tracks the original card.

Sam offers him the deck, the correct card subtly placed on top.  Kevin takes it.  Sam looks ridiculously proud.  “You’re good,” Kevin says.  It’s a lie, but his smile is real.

*******************************************************************************************************

Kevin’s got a bed, but he’s never slept on it.  It’s just a bare mattress in an empty room.  Everything he needs is in the closet: knives, borax, emergency whiskey mixed with holy water.  He’s learned to like sleeping in his nest of pillows and blankets.

He’s half asleep when he hears the old secret knock on his bedroom door.  Sam’s been finding excuses to stop by Kevin’s room and chat for five minutes pretty much every night.  Kevin’s not stupid.  He knows Sam’s checking up on him, reassuring himself that Kevin’s squared away in his little fortress. He might as well be tucking Kevin in.  Kevin figures that should piss him off—he’s a grown man—but he can’t make himself feel anything but grateful that Sam cares enough to make sure he’s all right.

Tonight when Sam walks in he doesn’t talk idly about the Etruscans or ask Kevin to look up the name of some fifth century scholar in the morning.  He just stands there looking lost, and then sits on the floor in front of the closet door.   

“When I go to bed I set my phone alarm to ring every hour on the hour,” Sam says eventually. 

This is news to Kevin.  It’s a good idea.  “And you missed some of the alarms?”

“No.  I heard them all.  Every night.”  He delivers the news like he’s saying he has cancer. 

“But that’s good,” Kevin says.  “Neither of us has lost time in a couple of weeks. And Dean seems okay, I guess.  Maybe we talked each other into a freak out over nothing.”  Kevin’s not sure he believes that, but the world is full of monsters, and if whatever was haunting them has decided to move on to the next victim he’s not interested in hunting it down.    

“Maybe,” Sam says. He’s looking at his hands.   “Maybe it was in my head.  I never finished the Trials, and I haven’t been quite right since.”  He sounds so worried that Kevin feels the confusing urge to reassure him that hey, maybe something really _is_ trying to kill them.

“Anyway, my point is, whatever’s going on seems to have stopped for now.  And me and Dean think we’ve got a lead on Cas.  He should have been here weeks ago.  We need to go find him.”

It takes a second for the implications of that to sink in.  “Both of you?” Sam gestures for Kevin to lower his voice and Kevin ignores him.  “You’re leaving me alone with whatever the hell has gotten into the bunker?  Are you kidding me?”

“I’m really sorry, but he’s our friend and he needs help.  I’d take you with us, but you’re a trouble magnet, and so is Cas.  You’d be in more danger out of the bunker than in it.  And if I’m right and Dean has something to do with this . . . I can imagine him screwing with our memories if he thought he had to, but I can’t imagine him deliberately turning something loose in the bunker that would hurt you.  You’ll be fine.”

“I guess I’ll have to be.”  He curls sullenly inward toward the back of the closet.

“You’ve got a phone.  If anything feels weird, anything at all, call me and then come back here and hunker down. You’ve got this place warded against everything in the supernatural alphabet, from angels to zombies.”

Kevin turned partly around to look at Sam.  “My closet doesn’t seem so crazy now, does it?”

“I never thought it was,” Sam says with a sincerity Kevin didn’t expect. “You’re smarter than either of us.  Honestly, right now I wish I had one of these myself. But I can’t start warding my bedroom now without making Dean suspicious.”

Kevin’s a bit taken aback.  Even _he_ thinks his closet isn’t the product of a healthy mind.  “Yeah, well, you ever decide you want to take shelter, you can always join me.”  He’s joking, except that he’s totally not.  He’d love nothing better than to sleep near someone else, even if it meant cramming two grown men into two square feet.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sam says, and gets up. 

When he’s gone Kevin goes over their conversation and concludes that Sam announced he’s ditching Kevin to get eaten by monsters, and Kevin responded by inviting Sam to sleep in his bed.  Which is how talks with a Winchester tend to go.

*******************************************************************************************************

Kevin loads his closet with holy water, protein bars, pill bottles, and batteries before the Winchesters take off.  He’s got no intention of leaving it for anything but absolutely necessary runs to the bathroom across the hall. 

Sam calls him the first evening to check in.  Kevin can hear the clamor of voices behind him, the dinner crowd at some diner.  Sam’s been to Lebanon plenty of times over the past couple of weeks, but Kevin’s never talked to him while he was there, and that makes Kevin wonder how far Sam really got.  He knows all too well from his time with Crowley how easy it is to implant false memories—Sam could easily believe he’d been to, say, the grocery store when in fact he’d never gone anywhere at all.  If Sam is calling from a city, though, then it’s not a memory.  It’s real.

“What can you see right now?” Kevin says.

“Nothing.  People eating dinner?”  Sam sounds confused.

“And they’re there, in front of your eyes?  You’re actually looking at them?”

“Yeah, absolutely.  I can see them while we’re talking.”  He gets it now.  “Hang on a sec.”

After a minute Sam texts him a ten second video.  “That’s what I’m looking at right now,” he says.  The video is a 360 degree turn on a city street: rush hour traffic, sidewalks crowded with people in suits, the plate glass window of a diner full of customers.  They can’t all be demons.  Surely they can’t.

“Thank you,” Kevin says.  “Really.”

“Any time.”

Sam doesn’t call again for three days.  Kevin works on the tablet as best he can by flashlight, and checks the clock he brought in with him at regular intervals.  Occasionally the hum of the bunker resolves itself into inarticulate whispers or the rise and fall of cello music.  A couple of times he catches a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, in and out of the flashlight’s beam; a shadow that might be in the shape of cat.  In other words, nothing unusual happens.

He’s half-convinced it’s safe enough to make a foray to the kitchen for food better than protein bars when his phone rings. 

Sam’s voice is quiet and strained.  “It’s real.  I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s definitely real.  Stay in your closet.  We got Cas, and we’re heading back.  I’ll tell you about it when I get there.”  He hangs up before Kevin has the chance to respond.   

Kevin wonders if there was any point to that call besides scaring the shit out of him.  He stays hunkered down in his closet for the next twelve hours until he hears the Winchesters come in the front door.  He doesn’t immediately run out to meet them.  He knows they’ve got Castiel with them, and Kevin prefers to avoid him as much as possible.  He already has to tolerate living under the same roof as Crowley; he’s got no desire to add another half-mad, unpredictably violent nonhuman entity to the mix.  Maybe if the Winchesters were a little more discriminating about which monsters they invited into their monster-proof bunker Kevin wouldn’t have had to spend the past four days hiding in a closet.

Kevin stays where he is and waits for Sam to come find him.  An hour passes, but Sam doesn’t appear.  Finally Kevin gives up and heads toward the main room.  His muscles protest after so much time curled up in a ball. 

“What do you mean he _left_?” It’s Sam.  He sounds pissed. 

“He said we wouldn’t be safe as long as he was here.  That it was his responsibility to help his brothers.  Blah, blah, angel crap.  Same as always.”  Kevin walks into the main room unnoticed.

“But why would he come on an eleven hour drive from Michigan with us if he was only going to stay thirty minutes?  He was so happy about living with us, and then I turn my back for half a minute and he bolts for the door?  He didn’t even finish his burrito, for Christ’s sake.”

 “I don’t get it either,” Dean says.  “Cas is a weirdo.  I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Cas booked it out of here already?”  Kevin says to Sam.

“Seems like,” Dean says.  He does a double take when he looks at Kevin.  “The hell happened to you?” Kevin doesn’t know what Dean’s talking about.

“Are those the same clothes you were wearing when we left?”  Sam says.

Kevin shrugs.  “Probably?” 

“Go grab a shower and let the grownups talk for a minute,” Dean says. 

Kevin wants to protest, but Sam gives him a look that tells him to beat it, so he does.  He even showers.  At the best of times shutting himself naked and unarmed into a tiny box with no back exit and water running loudly enough to drown out the sound of approaching footsteps isn’t Kevin’s idea of fun.  There was no way in hell he was going to do it while he was alone in the bunker.  It’s harrowing even now, but he feels better when it’s done.

Sam’s sitting on the mattress in his bedroom.  “So get this: when we found Cas he was being held hostage by a reaper, and she put a sword right through his chest.  I saw him die.  I get knocked out in the fight, and when I wake up the reaper’s dead and Cas doesn’t have a scratch on him.”

“And Dean’s story is . . .?”

“He made the reaper resurrect Cas and then killed her.  Which is way too convenient.  And that wasn’t the only time I blacked out.  I woke up mid-conversation with Dean more than once.  And he still swears nothing’s wrong.”

“And now Dean claims Cas ran off without telling you.”  It all sounds terribly unlikely, but Kevin can’t quite resolve the facts into a sensible conspiracy.  Anything that wanted them dead would’ve tried to kill them by now, and if it wanted the tablet like Crowley had, surely it would’ve stayed with Kevin in the bunker, not followed Sam.  Is Dean controlling it somehow?  Kevin can’t imagine how or why.   

“Cas ran as soon as he saw the inside of this place,” Kevin says after a moment.  “Maybe he realized there was something bad here and decided to save himself.”  He thinks about it again.  “No, wait.  How long did you say it was between when you got here and when Cas left?”

“Half an hour, tops.  Why?” Sam’s tapping his fingers restlessly against Kevin’s mattress.

“I heard you get back over an hour before I walked in on the two of you arguing.”

Sam’s tapping skips a beat.  “Son of a bitch.  That’s how Cas disappeared so fast.”

They look at each other for a minute.  Finally Kevin says what they’re both thinking.  “It has to be Dean.”      

Sam rests his forehead on his hands.  “God damn it.  I’ve tested him, though, over and over again, for everything I can think of.  And I’ve been living with him for over a month since the Trials ended.  He’s my brother.  I’d know if he wasn’t.”  He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as Kevin.

“What are we going to do?”  Kevin’s gut instinct is to grab all the cash, drugs, and weapons he can get his hands on and run for his life.  But that’s stupid.  Outside there’s a whole world of things out to get him.  In here there’s only one.

Sam shakes his head.  “I don’t know yet.  I need to talk to Cas about what really happened.  Dean says he doesn’t have a number for him, but he’s lying.  It may take me a day or two to get it out of Dean’s phone though.  In the meantime, just play it cool, okay?  Nothing’s changed.”

Sam gets up from the bed like he’s going to leave.  “Don’t go,” Kevin says before he can stop himself.  He doesn’t want to be alone.  “You can stay in the closet.  We’ll be safer.”

Kevin figures he must look good and scared, because Sam wavers like he’s seriously considering that ridiculous offer.  But finally he says, “I can’t.  We have to act normal.  Dean will notice if I’m shut up in your bedroom all night.  You’ve got the wards and I can hear you if you call for me.  You’ll be all right.”

“What about you?”  Kevin would like to believe that it’s friendship talking, but it’s mostly his fear that Sam’s going to die horribly and leave Kevin alone with whatever this thing is.

“I can take care of myself.” 

“It doesn’t seem like it.”  It’s an asshole thing to say, but Sam’s brain is getting edited left and right.  It really doesn’t feel like he has this situation under control.

“I’m fine,” Sam says coolly and walks out.

Kevin lies in his closet afterward, playing the ten second video clip Sam sent him over and over again.  Dean may not be Dean but Sam is still Sam and Kevin is still Kevin and there are still cities full of people, most of whom aren’t secretly monsters.  Hardly any of them, probably.  And the voices hiding inside the hum of the bunker are just his imagination, but they’re really loud tonight and he needs them to shut the fuck up. 

When he finally hears Dean, or whoever it is, go to bed, he creeps out of his closet and heads for Sam’s bedroom.  He doesn’t care how suspicious it is, he needs not to be alone right now.  But Sam’s not there.  

Kevin walks quietly on into the dark library.  Surely Sam is in there looking for answers.  He slips through the stacks, trying to guess what section Sam would be in without success.  

He turns a corner, and at first all he sees is a floating sphere of books lit from within.  Then he sees Sam standing at the center.  His eyes flash blue.  Not Sam.  Kevin has time for two thoughts.  The first is that he’s been unbelievably stupid.  The second is to scream for Dean.

*******************************************************************************************************

Someone’s on top of Kevin.  He comes up swinging and catches the person on the jaw.  There’s a brief struggle and Kevin’s pinned.

“Calm down, calm down.  It’s just me.”  Dean. 

“Get the fuck off me,” Kevin shrieks.  “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Dean sits back away from him and holds up his hands.  There’s blood on them.

“What’s happening? Why is there blood?”  He feels woozy.  The edges of his vision are gray.  The last thing he can remember is lying on the floor of his closet.

“It’s just a nosebleed.”  Dean’s tone is placating.  “I was trying to check if you were hurt anywhere else and you flipped out.”

Sam runs in carrying a shotgun and nearly falls over the two of them.  He takes in the scene and wheels around on Dean.  “I heard yelling.  The hell did you do to him?”  He’s not exactly pointing the gun at Dean, but he’s also not pointing it nearly as far away as he should be if he wants to pretend he still thinks this guy is his brother.

“What did _I_ do?”  Dean says incredulously. 

Kevin gets up unsteadily.  He’s still not sure what’s happening, but he knows they’re about five seconds away from everything going to hell.

“I’m fine,” he says to Sam.  “I pass out sometimes, is all.  I don’t sleep enough, I work on the tablet too much, I keel over.  No big deal.”

He turns to Dean.  “Sorry I freaked out on you.  I was confused.”

“Don’t worry about it.  I know what it’s like to wake up fighting,” Dean says.  “We’re cool.  Why don’t you get some rest?”  Kevin nods.    

Dean points at Sam: “You.  We need to talk.  Now.”

“Yeah, we do,” Sam says.

The two of them walk off together in the direction of the dungeon.  Kevin makes like he’s heading back to his bedroom, gives it five minutes, and then tries to follow them.  The door leading downstairs is locked.  Kevin goes to wait in Sam’s bedroom instead.  

When Sam walks in an hour later he’s barely closed the door before Kevin demands, “What happened?  What did he say to you?”

“Who?”  Sam’s baffled.  Kevin wants to scream.

“You remember finding me and Dean in the library?” he says, and tries not to sound as angry as feels.  This isn’t Sam’s fault.

“Of course.”     

“And then you and Dean went off to the dungeon to talk about what happened, and you’ve been gone for an hour.”

“No, that’s not . . .”  Sam trails off.  He sinks down on the bed and covers his face.  “We can’t keep doing this.”

“We need to run.  Now, tonight.  Whatever it is, it’ll kill us both.”  Kevin can still see all the reasons that running is a terrible idea—they’re sacrificing a fortress they desperately need, they’re handing all the secrets of the universe over to God-knows-what, they’re abandoning Dean, if any part of that thing is still Dean—but they’re out of alternatives.

“I can’t leave him,” Sam says.

“We don’t even know that’s him.  He could be dead already.”

Sam doesn’t even consider it.  “No, that’s Dean.  Part of it is him, at least.  I don’t know what new kind of possession or spell he’s been hit with, but he’s a victim here too.  And I’m going to fix him.” 

Kevin’s not really on board with that plan, but he also knows that if he tries to survive outside the bunker right now without Sam he’ll be even more screwed than he already is.

“Great,” Kevin says.  “Then let’s fucking fix him.  Before he eats us.”

*******************************************************************************************************

The next two days are hell.  They try to go for a walk in the morning and Dean invites himself along.  He’s nothing but cheerful, but it quickly becomes obvious that he’s not going to allow Sam and Kevin to be alone together anymore.  No matter where they are or what they’re doing he’s constantly _there_ , talking incessantly about wendigos, terrible bands, and some guy named Charlie who’s into LARPing.

Midway through the first day Kevin mouths at Sam behind Dean’s back, “ _He knows_ ,” but Sam shakes his head.  Kevin’s going to cuss him out if they ever have a moment alone.  Obviously Kevin was right, they should have run.  Now it’s too late.  They couldn’t plan an escape together anymore if they wanted to.

Still, it must be worse for Sam.  All Kevin has to do to stay in character is act moody and hostile.  Sam has to pretend he actually likes the thing that’s walking around wearing his brother’s face.  Besides, Kevin knows the drill.  He spent weeks playing along with the Demonic Winchesters on the fake houseboat.  Back then he’d have given anything to have a real person with him.  Now, though, he thinks it was easier to play this game when the only life at stake was his own.  This time Sam is counting on him too, and it makes every lie more terrifying.  Like Kevin hasn’t gotten enough people killed already.

Kevin’s alone in the library pretending to work on the tablet when Sam comes tearing through just short of a run and grabs him by the arm. 

“He’s in the middle of one of his Spanish soap operas,” he whispers.  “I lifted Cas’s number off him this morning.  We’ve got maybe five minutes before he notices I’m gone.”

He hustles Kevin into the supply closet and shuts them in as he dials.  It’s too dark to see his face, but Kevin hears him release a held breath when a voice picks up on the other end. 

“Cas, man, it’s good to talk to you.” 

There’s a murmur on the other end of the line that Kevin can’t distinguish.  He leans in closer.

“No,” Sam says, “we’re not so good right now.  Something’s wrong with Dean.  He’s possessed or cursed or I don’t know what, but he’s not himself.  And something’s been stealing my memories.  Mine and Kevin’s.  I need to know the real reason you ran off the other day.”

There’s a brief silence. Kevin hears Cas say, “I knew he was lying to me.  I didn’t ‘run off,’ Sam.  Dean asked me to leave.  He said Ezekiel hadn’t healed you fully.  He told me your health was still fragile and my presence put you in danger.”

“Who the fuck is Ezekiel?” Kevin says. 

“Who’s Ezekiel, Cas?”  Sam asks.  He sounds a lot calmer than Kevin feels.

“The angel who healed you in the hospital.”

“The hospital?”  Sam’s voice wavers a little. “Listen, angels can alter memories, can’t they?  Screw with time?  Is there any chance Ezekiel’s still with us?  That he followed us into the bunker somehow?”

“I doubt it.  He’d never get past the layers of protection on that place.  He’d have to actually be inside one of—oh.  No.  Dean would never agree to that.”  Even through the barely audible thread of tinny sound Kevin hears the doubt.   

“You’re telling me Dean’s an angel now?”  Kevin says.  He tries to remember to whisper in the face of rising panic.  “We’ve got an angel in here with us?”

Sam bows his head and holds the phone away from him.  “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”  And then he says to Cas, “Yeah, he would.  If it was the price this Ezekiel asked to save my life he would.  Why else lie about the hospital?  Or how I got healed?  Why separate us before we had the chance to talk alone?  Jesus, that day with the reaper he must have _resurrected_ you.”

“It does explain several things,” Cas says reluctantly. 

“So . . . so what are we even saying here?  I’ve been living with Ezekiel ever since the Trials?  Because I know Dean, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been talking to him at least some of the time.”  

“That’s possible,” Cas says. “If Ezekiel wanted to avoid detection he could hide in Dean’s subconscious when he didn’t need use of the vessel.  That fits with what I saw.  It wasn’t an angel who asked me to leave.  An angel wouldn’t have looked that frightened.”  Sam squeezes the phone until it creaks.  “If he’s made a deal with Ezekiel I can help you free him, but we need to meet in person, and I can’t get anywhere near the bunker without Ezekiel knowing.”

“All right,” Sam says.  “I’ll figure out how to get away from here without making him suspicious.  I’ll call you again when I know when and where.”  He hangs up.  Kevin stands with him in the dark.

“An angel,” Sam says.  “That dumb bastard.  After everything we’ve been through.  Him and his martyr complex.”

“How can you get away to meet Cas without Dean—or Ezekiel, or whoever he is now—finding out?”  Kevin asks.

“I’ll think of something.”

Just then Dean calls from the other room, “Hey, Sam, you’re missing the double wedding.”

“Damn it,” Sam says.  “I have to go.”

Kevin can’t imagine any set of circumstances that would allow Sam to disappear for a day with the car that wouldn’t look suspicious.  And Dean sure as hell isn’t letting the two of them go off together.  It’s not so much that Kevin has a good idea as that he has an immediate idea, and there’s no telling how long it might be before he and Sam can talk again.

“Tell him I’ve been begging you to let me stay somewhere outside the bunker, even for a couple of days,” Kevin says.  He steps out of the supply closet and heads toward the library. 

What?” Sam says.  Kevin keeps walking. 

“Say I miss people and sunlight.  Say I’m overworked and I’m starting to crack.  He’ll believe that.  Hell, it’s true.  I need a couple of days in a motel, apartment, abandoned building, what-the-fuck ever that’s not this place.  He’s desperate to split us up.  This is a good reason.  He’ll take it.  If he stays with me, have Cas come to the bunker.  If he comes back here, send Cas to me.”  Kevin stops in front of the chair where he’d been working.

“Absolutely not,” Sam says. “I won’t let you—“  Kevin throws himself to the ground hard enough that his lip splits against his teeth and starts howling.

It goes better than he could have hoped.  He reduces his howl to a whimper once Dean arrives on the scene, the better to eavesdrop.  Sam acts convincingly alarmed by Kevin’s behavior.  Probably because he is.  Kevin didn’t leave Sam a lot of options—if he doesn’t play along he just increases the risk that Kevin will get busted for faking, which would put them both in more danger.  Kevin thinks there’s a subtle note of irritation in Sam’s voice when he delivers Kevin’s cover story, but if so Dean doesn’t pick up on it.       

Dean kneels on the floor.  "Did he hurt you?" he whispers.  For an instant Kevin thinks it's as good as an admission, and then he realizes Dean means _Sam_.  He's trying to turn them against each other.  Kevin whimpers louder so he doesn't have to answer, and Sam crosses the room to stand over them.  Kevin doesn't know what the hell Sam thinks he can do if Ezekiel tries anything, but he looms around protectively anyway.  Dean lays off the Sam angle after that, but he keeps asking Kevin to explain what's wrong.  That's unacceptable.  The more questions Kevin answers the more likely he is to give something away.  He decides on a convenient lack of comprehension. 

“Falafel,” Kevin says, because why the fuck not?  It’s a fun word to say.  “Falafel, falafel, falafel.”  It shuts Dean down effectively.

Dean latches onto the idea of taking Kevin away on vacation remarkably fast.  It only takes a single afternoon of quiet babbling to convince Dean to throw some of Kevin’s clothes into a backpack.  He announces to Sam he’s taking Kevin away for some “R and R.”

Sam stops them at the door and wraps an old blue canvas coat around Kevin’s shoulders like it’s a tender gesture of brotherly affection.  As he’s bending down he hisses in Kevin’s ear, “This is so stupid.” 

Kevin catches his eye.  “Falafel,” he says.  He hopes it sounds like “I’ll be fine.”

But Sam’s right:  this is stupid.  Kevin has no idea where Dean’s taking him.  Maybe they’re going to a nice bed and breakfast.  Maybe they’re going to a ditch where Dean—or Ezekiel, or whoever’s driving the Impala—can leave Kevin’s body after snapping his neck.  They pass motel after motel without stopping, and Kevin’s fear grows sharper with each one.  He consoles himself that if Ezekiel wanted him dead it would’ve happened ages ago.

In the meantime Kevin does his best to play the part of a broken child:  head down, body resting against the door, arm wrapped around his tablet.  Fear is easy to imitate because he feels it.  The hard part is remembering to look harmless, like he’s a poor lost lamb and not a coiled ball of rage and cunning.  Whether it’s Dean or Crowley, the important thing is convincing the other person that Kevin can’t hurt him.

Dean tries to make conversation.  Kevin stays quiet for a while and listens for clues, but there’s no evidence that Dean is anything other than what he seems.  He rambles on about chicks, cars, and classic rock in exactly the same way he’s always done.  If it’s a performance it’s pitch perfect.  Kevin finds it unsettling, sitting inches away from this thing that sounds so much like his friend.  He wishes Sam were with him.  Eventually he can’t take it anymore and shuts Dean down with a constant, muttered chant of “falafel, falafel, falafel.”  He keeps at it long after Dean’s surrendered and turned on the classic rock station.  He keeps at it for the next seven hours, until his throat hurts and his voice gives out.  It’s comforting; it drowns out the sound of his brain.  Maybe his breakdown isn’t entirely fake.    

They drive for so long that Kevin begins to abandon hope there’s a motel in his future.  He’s almost reconciled himself to death by the time Dean pulls over at a shady one–story motor lodge.  When Dean goes inside Kevin digs out his phone and texts Sam, “Not quite dead yet.”  He gets the immediate reply, “Thank God!  Where are you?”  Dean comes back before he can answer.

Dean moves everything, including Kevin, into the motel room with military efficiency, and paints a library’s worth of sigils on the walls.  They won’t be getting the security deposit back.  When Kevin’s situated on the bed, hugging his tablet and trying his best to look lost, Dean says, “So, uh, yeah.  I felt like you needed to take a couple days off.  Away from the bunker.  Branson’s a cool town, right?”

Dean seems to be waiting for some kind of coherent response.  It’s dangerous to start talking sense to him after acting so far gone, but Kevin also doesn’t want Dean to linger.  Kevin needs to give him just enough to allow him to justify leaving.

Kevin keeps his head down and mutters, “Yeah, it’s nice to see sunlight.”  It is, too.  He’d kill for a bedroom with windows.  

“Yeah!” Dean says, obviously relieved by the response.  “Yeah, you’ll get some sun, maybe walk around outside a little.  Just not too far, you know.  But you’ll be okay as long as you’re in here, with the sigils and all, and you’ve got windows, and you don’t need to stress out.”

Kevin nods.  “It’ll be good.  I really need this.”

“Right.  Exactly.”  Dean sounds so desperate it’s a little scary.  Kevin knows now what Cas meant about Dean sounding afraid.  He wonders who’s talking:  Ezekiel or the poor bastard being held hostage.  He suspects it’s the latter.  He feels bad for Dean, even if he pretty much did this to himself. 

“I’d hang out with you, you know,” Dean says, “maybe show you how to pick up girls, but I need to go back.  Sam wanted me to stay here and keep an eye on you, but he’s not a hundred percent himself.  After the Trials and all.  I don’t feel right leaving him alone for so long.”

The bit about Sam telling Dean to stay is news to Kevin.  He’d assumed Sam would want to draw the danger back to himself as soon as possible.  But maybe Sam thinks meeting with Cas is riskier than staying with Ezekiel.

Or maybe Sam’s halfway to Mexico and wants to buy himself a couple of days.  Maybe as soon as Kevin was gone Sam decided his brother and the kid could go fuck themselves while he saved his own ass, just like he did before.  He could be texting Kevin from Tijuana.

“I get it,” Kevin says.  “You need to take care of your brother.”  He draws himself up into a ball, trying to strike a careful balance:  weak enough you can’t picture him plotting with your enemies, but not so weak you’d feel unacceptably guilty about leaving him alone in a motel room.

“Sure,” Dean says.  “And you’ll be safe here.  Safer.”  He hands Kevin $200 in twenties. “For take-out or whatever.  I’m just a phone call away if anything goes wrong, okay?”  He throws a worried look over his shoulder as he heads out the door.  “You’ll be fine.”  It’s less an observation than a command.

Kevin waits until he sees the Impala pull away before he calls Sam.  He’s relieved when Sam picks up.  He doesn’t exactly accuse Sam of being in Tijuana, but he doesn’t exactly not, either. Sam swears up and down that he never told Dean anything about staying with Kevin, and he sounds like he means it.  Kevin can’t think of a good reason why Dean, or Ezekiel, or whoever, would lie about that, but who knows why some creepy undercover angel does anything?  Kevin mostly believes Sam.  Especially since the only alternative is that Kevin’s completely fucked.

Sam says he’s sending Cas over, but it’ll take a few hours.  Kevin settles in to wait.  It’s strange being in a hotel room.  He couldn’t afford them when he was on his own.  It’d been nothing but abandoned buildings with no heat or water, the dull ache of damp cold seeping into his fingers through two pairs of socks.  And after that the houseboat, and the fake houseboat, and the bunker.  He associates hotel rooms with normality.  His mom used to take him on vacations every summer:  the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Disney World.  If he forgets the last two years he can almost believe she’s about to walk through the door. 

There’s a TV in the room, but Kevin ignores it.  There are plenty of those in the bunker.  He opts for the window instead, peering out through the blinds at middle-aged white couples, alone or with children in tow, gazing down at maps and talking into smart phones.  They look happy.  Or at least they look oblivious.  Kevin figures it’s mostly the same thing.

He sees the bus when it stops in front of the motor lodge, but he doesn’t recognize the man in the Gas N’Sip uniform until he’s nearly at the door.  It’s a good cover, even if it’s rather undignified compared to the trenchcoat.

“Cas,” Kevin says when he opens the door.  The nickname is awkward in his mouth, but he wants to sound like a grown man meeting a clandestine connection, not the scared boy he feels like.  Castiel intimidates the hell out of him, even in that stupid outfit.

Castiel examines the sigils on the wall as he steps inside.  When he’s satisfied he turns to Kevin and says in a tone of command, “Remove your shirt.”

“What, you’re not going to buy me dinner first?” Kevin says.

Castiel squints at him in confusion.  “Why, are you hungry?”

“Never mind,” Kevin says.  “Why do you want me to take my shirt off?” 

Castiel drops his duffel bag on the bed and pulls out a pack of colored pens.  “There are wards that will make you invisible to an angel.  They’ll hide your thoughts and protect your memory from interference.  At least for a short time.  If you want to live through a confrontation with Ezekiel you’ll need them.”

Kevin takes off Sam’s coat and the t-shirt he had on underneath it.  He hasn’t stripped this far in front of another person since high school gym class.  It sucked then too.  He sits on the bed.  “Okay, go for it.”

Castiel draws up a chair in front of him and pulls a stack of papers from his duffel.  “I drew the pattern out for you.  You’ll want to copy it onto Sam while you’re both still well away from the bunker.”  Kevin reaches for it, but Castiel bats his hand away.  “Don’t move.  You’ll ruin the lines.”

Cas grabs him by the shoulder and begins drawing an arc just below his collar bone, head bowed so low him hair brushes Kevin’s skin.  The scrape of the pen-tip tickles.  Kevin hates every second of it.  He doesn’t want this creepy dude putting his hands all over him.  Castiel’s not even human.

“You know this Ezekiel guy?  What do you think he wants?”  Kevin asks, as much to dispel the intimacy of the moment as because he expects a helpful answer.

“I did once, and he was a good soldier then. But that was many years ago.  Before my world fell apart.”  Castiel presses the point of the pen into Kevin’s chest harder than necessary.  “Before I destroyed it.” 

He looks up from his work and meets Kevin’s eye.  “Do you know what happens to an earthbound angel without a vessel?”

“No,” Kevin says.  He’s never had any reason to care.

Castiel bows his head and goes back to drawing.  There’s a golden dragon taking shape on the right side of Kevin’s chest.  “My garrison was tasked with watching the earth.  A few times one of my people was ejected from a vessel unexpectedly and couldn’t find another.  Angels aren’t built to function in your reality.  Without a vessel we can’t see or hear or touch, and we can’t communicate with most humans without causing them grave harm.  It feels like being buried alive.  By the time I found my people they were half-mad—frightened and confused, barely aware what they were. They recovered in time, once I took them home.  But the fallen angels who fail to find vessels now don’t have anyone to look for them. They don’t have a home to go back to.  They’ll wander forever.  Even the best of us might do regrettable things to avoid that.”  Castiel’s head is still bent, so Kevin can’t see his face.  His voice is steady.

“So he just wants Dean’s body?”  Kevin says.  “Why not possess him and leave, then?”  He thinks maybe he should feel bad about what’s happening to Castiel’s friends, but he doesn’t have a lot of mental real estate left for compassion.  Especially not for creatures who’ve screwed him over so thoroughly. 

Castiel tips Kevin’s head to the side and starts drawing a line of Enochian sigils along his carotid artery. “I don’t know what he wants with Dean.  But it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that I’ve got an Enochian exorcism that’ll drive him out, and I’m certain it’s effective.  The demon Alastair would’ve used it on me quite successfully if Sam’s powers hadn’t destroyed him.”

“Powers?”  Kevin says.  That’s a new one.

Castiel ignores the question.  “Even if you and Sam succeed in trapping Ezekiel, the holy fire won’t hold him forever.  You need to be able to recite this perfectly.”  As Castiel finishes the sigils he runs through the exorcism with Kevin dozens of times, making him repeat the phrases over and over again until he’s memorized them phonetically. 

When Castiel is done drawing he leans back in the chair to survey his work.  “Don’t let anything break the lines,” he says.

Kevin pulls Sam’s massive jacket carefully over his shoulders.  He doesn’t feel like being half-naked in front of Castiel any longer than he absolutely has to.  He picks up the drawings and the phonetic exorcism Castiel has written out.

“So that’s it?  Sneak up on him, light the holy oil, read the exorcism?” 

“Yes,” Castiel says, and then hesitates, like he’s just now making up his mind.  “No.  There’s one more thing.”  Castiel pulls a gun out of his duffel.  “There are three bullets in this, molded from the metal of an angel sword.  They can kill Ezekiel.  They can kill almost anything.  It took tremendous effort to get them.”  He places the gun in Kevin’s hand.  “You need to hide it.  You can’t give it to Sam.”

“Why not?”  Kevin’s only fired a gun a half dozen times, when Dean took him down to the bunker’s shooting range.  This seems like a Sam kind of problem.

“Because Dean is his brother.  He won’t use it, even if he should.  I said before I don’t know what Ezekiel’s endgame is, and I don’t.  But you’re right that if he just wanted a vessel he’d have taken Dean’s body and left.  And if he wanted _you_ he’d never have left you here alone with the tablet.  It has to be the bunker itself.  It’s the single greatest library of esoteric knowledge ever created.  If it falls into the wrong hands it could destroy your world.  If you can’t exorcise Ezekiel you need to kill him.”

Kevin holds the gun like it might bite him.  “No, I can’t.  He’s my friend.”

He braces to get tossed around the room.  In his experience Castiel doesn’t take kindly to ‘no.’  But Castiel just sinks lower in his chair.  “I know I shouldn’t ask this of you.  If it has to be done, it should be me who does it.  After all the ways I’ve failed him I owe him that much, at least. But I’m still connected to ‘angel radio,’ as you all call it.  Even with the wards, if I came within a mile of the bunker Ezekiel would sense me, and he’d kill us all.  I’m truly sorry, but it has to be you.”

Kevin reluctantly tucks the gun into the bottom of his bag.  “Let’s hope I don’t have to use it.”

“Don’t hope,” Castiel says as he rises to go.  “Don’t fail.  Do the exorcism right.”

Kevin nods.  The AP student hasn’t been entirely ground out of him.  He still has the rock bottom belief that he can make this plan go off perfectly. 

Castiel turns back at the door.  He suddenly looks terribly human.  “Do you happen to have any money I can borrow?  I spent everything I had to get here, and I need to be back for the morning shift on Monday.”

The cost of a bus ticket from Branson back to Kansas is only a hundred dollars, but Kevin has been planning to pocket the other half.  He wants something to fall back on in case the plan goes bad and he has to run.  He knows all too well what it’s like to eat out of garbage cans, and he’d rather not repeat the experience. 

Kevin considers his options, then pulls a hundred in twenties out his pocket and hands it over.  “This should be enough to get you home, yeah?”

“Yes, thank you,” Castiel says.  He looks touched to a degree that makes Kevin uncomfortable.  He’s still not sure he wants to be friends with Castiel.

 Besides, Kevin figures it’s not so much generosity as realism.  If the plan goes bad he won’t need money to fall back on, because if the plan goes bad he’s going to be dead.

*******************************************************************************************************

Kevin can’t touch his chest or neck without the risk he’ll smudge the ink, so naturally he develops a phantom itch that travels erratically over his body for the entire nine hour bus ride back to Lebanon.  At least the heating on the bus is out.  He doesn’t know what he’d do if he started sweating.  

He spends his time reading the exorcism to himself over and over again and tracing the pattern Cas drew out for him with the tip of his finger.  His other hand stays firmly on the gun hidden in his backpack.  He’s flipped up the collar of Sam’s jacket to hide the sigils on his neck so that he looks less conspicuous, but he figures it’s probably a lost cause.

Kevin hits his stop just after dark.  The closest he could get to Lebanon was ninety minutes away in Salina.  No one knows him here.   When he walks out the door of the bus station he considers taking his angel wards and magic gun and walking away into the night.  He doesn’t know how long he’d make it on his own, but he figures he’d at least last until sunrise, which is better than he’s likely to do at the bunker.  Then he sees the Impala parked in the vacant lot across the street, Sam’s shadow in the front seat, drumming its fingers against the steering wheel.  He walks over.

“I told him I was on a beer run,” Sam says when Kevin slides into the passenger seat. 

“For three hours?”

“I’ll say the car broke down.  He only has to believe it for a few minutes.”  Sam looks eagerly at the sheets of paper in Kevin’s hand.  Kevin made sure he had them and the pens out before he got into the car.  He didn’t want to dig through his backpack in front of Sam and risk him seeing the gun.

Kevin passes the drawings over to Sam and partially unbuttons his jacket to reveal the design on his chest.  “He can’t read our minds, or dick with our memories.  He can’t even sense we’re there.  It won’t last long, but I guess it doesn’t have to.”

Kevin hadn’t thought about the logistics of drawing the sigils on Sam until now.  It turns out to be a huge pain in the ass.  It’s too dark to do it outside, even if Sam wanted to stand around in twenty degree weather with his shirt off.   They end up in the backseat of the Impala with the overhead light on and the engine running so the heat doesn’t cut out.  Sam has his back to the passenger side door, one impossibly long leg stretched out on the seat and the other sprawled into the foot well.  Kevin’s pretty much in his lap.  It’s the least convenient imaginable way to arrange two human bodies.

When Sam starts to unbutton his flannel shirt Kevin almost jokes that this is further than he ever got with his girlfriend, but then he realizes that’s really not funny.  He starts laughing anyway, giddy and a little hysterical, although he’s doesn’t know why.  It probably has something to do with the fact that he hasn’t slept in three days.   

Sam smiles back, but it’s tight and uncomfortable.  “This is weird, huh?”

Kevin doesn’t feel all that weird, honestly.  The position’s awkward, but Sam’s his friend.  It’s not like having some stranger paw him.  But if Sam hates this as much as Kevin hated having Cas draw on him, he must be miserable.

“Yeah, I guess,” Kevin says.  “I’ll try to be quick.”  He pulls out the yellow pen and starts to trace out the head of the dragon on the right side of Sam’s chest.  “Hey, hold this.”  He puts the drawing into Sam’s right hand.  Sam tries to tip his head to look at it while keeping his torso still.

“You think you can draw all that?”

“A dragon?” Kevin says.  “Sure.  I’ve done that plenty of times.  I’ll just pretend you’re my seventh grade science notebook.”

Sam’s smile is a little more sincere this time.  Kevin tries to think of pleasant, neutral things to talk about while he draws, something to make Sam more comfortable, but he runs out fast, and Sam isn’t really holding up his end of the conversation.

It’s easier to focus in silence, anyway, and Kevin’s never tried as hard at anything in his life as he tries to get this pattern perfectly right.   The car is silent except for the soft purr of the motor and the quiet rise and fall of Sam’s breathing under Kevin’s hands.  The air is close with the blast of the heater and the warmth of two bodies, and Kevin struggles against the impulse to lay his head on Sam’s chest and fall asleep.

When the yellow dragon has taken shape Kevin scrambles half into the front seat and angles the rearview mirror so that Sam can use it.  “It looks right to me,” Kevin says. “Does it look right to you?”

Sam looks at the drawing in his hand and then studies his reflection for a long moment.  “Yeah.  Yeah, that looks right.  Good job.”

Kevin ducks his head to hide his smile and starts in on Sam’s abdomen.  It’s just three rows of Enochian script, far less complicated than the dragon, and Kevin feels his confidence grow. 

“Hey, Cas wrote down a phonetic version of the Enochian exorcism, but it’s still kind of hard to say right.  He made me learn it.  Want to go over it with me a couple of times?”

Sam’s spine stiffens beneath him until it’s like a steel rod.  “No,” Sam says sharply.  “That is entirely unnecessary.”  His voice sounds different, suddenly cold and clipped.  Apparently Kevin’s insulted him.  Kevin rolls his eyes where Sam can’t see it.

“Right on.  I didn’t know how familiar you were with Enochian.”

“Acceptably,” Sam says, and there’s a hint of amusement.  Maybe vanity.  Kevin decides it was a bad idea to question Sam’s language skills and falls silent again.  After a moment he feels Sam’s vertebrae settle down into their accustomed slump.

He does the sigils along Sam’s carotid artery last.  He takes Sam’s jaw in his hand and tips his head back, exposing his throat.  Kevin lingers over his work.  The warmth of the car and the rhythm of Sam’s pulse under his fingers create a sense of safety he knows will break as soon as they’re done.  He wants to stay in this moment as long as he can.  It feels damn near inevitable that at least one of them is going to die tonight.  He remembers his mother, and how he’d thought she’d live forever.  The last words he said to her were, “I don’t have time for you right now.”  And then he’d hung up the phone.

“So, Sam,” he says, and he doesn’t know what he wants to follow up with, except that he can’t let things lie where they are.  Sam looks at him curiously, and that just makes it worse.  Now he’s got an audience.  He tips Sam’s head further away from him than strictly necessary.  “I just wanted to tell you, I feel like I’ve kind of been an asshole to you sometimes, and I don’t want you to think . . . look, you’re cool, we’re cool.  I like you.   Cool?”  This may very well be the stupidest set of words Kevin’s ever strung together.

If Sam thinks it’s funny he hides it well.  “Cool,” he says.  “I like you too.  And you’re not an asshole.”

Kevin caps the last of the pens and compares the mural on Sam’s chest to the drawing.  They match perfectly.  Sam catches his eye.  “We’re going to be okay.  Really.  I’ve trapped an angel before a dozen times, usually with less prep.  It’s not easy, but it’s doable.  Honestly I’m more worried about Dean than I am about us.”  Sam sounds like he means it.  Kevin nods and tries not to think about the gun in his backpack.      

Sam’s hand rests on the back of Kevin’s neck for an instant, and then he’s out of the car, walking back around to the driver’s seat.  When he’s settled in front of the wheel he looks at Kevin in the rearview mirror.  “When we’re close to the bunker, get down as low as you can so he doesn’t see you.” Sam’s all business now.  “I’ll park in the garage.  I’ll go in and keep him busy for at least ten minutes.  There’s holy oil in the trunk.  Pour a circle directly in front of the hood and then get the hell out of there.  Go to your room and hide in the closet.  It’s warded against angels.  Don’t come out again for anything until I tell you it’s safe.  Got it?”

“Sure,” Kevin says.  It’s the last word from either of them for the rest of the trip.  Sam doesn’t even bother to turn on the radio, although his fingers tap out an endless rhythm on the steering wheel.  Kevin watches the identical string of trees outlined against the night sky and wonders if he’ll live to see them again. He doubts it.  Even if they both survive the night, and Dean too, Kevin will still be bound to the bunker.  If he’s lucky Sam will take him for daily walks like he’s a dog in need of exercise, but he’s never going to make it as far as Salina again.

He gets down in the foot well of the backseat long before they pass through Lebanon.  Who knows how far an angel’s eyes can reach, even with the sigils?  Kevin doesn’t want to take any chances.      

When he feels the uneven pavement that leads up to the garage he has the impulse to throw himself from the moving car and run for it.  He’s going to die.  He’s really, truly going to die.  But running off into the freezing woods alone at night with an angel on the loose is the next thing to suicide.  Besides, he doesn’t want to look like a coward in front of Sam.  

The hidden door of the garage grinds shut behind them and the Impala comes to a stop.  Sam unlocks the trunk and then disappears through the back door into the bunker proper.  Kevin makes quick work of the oil, then grabs his backpack and hides behind the car next to the Impala.  All his instincts want him to be across the room, but he’s a lousy shot.  He needs to be close.  His hand is sweaty on the barrel of the gun.  He’s never killed a man, let alone a friend.  He doesn’t want there to be a global disaster, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to be the guy responsible for letting it happen, but he doesn’t know if he can pull the trigger, even for all the faceless millions.  Maybe for Sam.

The back door opens.  “I’m telling you, I got her running again, but she kind of smells like burning,” Sam’s saying as he and Dean walk into the garage.  His coat collar is up to hide the sigils on his neck.  “And I had some pieces left over.”

“Pieces of _Baby_?”  Dean sounds horrified.  He practically runs to the hood of the Impala.  Sam drops the match before Dean gets the chance to pop it, and Dean’s surrounded in flame.

It happens so fast Kevin doesn’t have time for fear.  Holy shit, Sam is brilliant at his job.  Kevin had braced himself for every possibility except that their desperate, death-defying plan would go off without a hitch.  He’s fine.  Sam’s fine.  All they need to do is recite that damned exorcism and Dean will be fine too.  He’s so relieved he could cry.  And then Dean hops out of the circle.

“Ow, ow, ow!” Dean says, beating at the smoldering denim around his ankles.  “Son of a bitch!  What the hell, Sam?”

Sam shifts his gaze between Dean and the fire that’s still burning in front of the Impala.  He looks stunned.  “You’re not an angel?” he says finally in a small voice.

Dean hesitates for an instant, and then says, “Of course I’m not a fucking angel.  Why would you think that?”  Crouched behind the car, Kevin squeezes the gun tighter.  Dean may not be an angel, but he’s something.  Something they’re not prepared to fight.

Sam recovers enough to sound angry, but there’s still doubt in his voice.  “Cas told me about Ezekiel.  Maybe he’s not wearing you but I know you made some kind of deal.  And I know he’s still around.   He’s screwing with my memories--“ Dean opens his mouth, but Sam cuts him off, “—and I don’t want to hear any more about the Trials.  Kevin didn’t do the Trials and it’s happening to him too.  What have you done, Dean?” 

Dean stares at Sam, evidently stumped.  “God damn it, Zeke!” he says after a long moment.  “Get your ass out here.”  Sam’s eyes flash blue and Kevin’s world turns upside down.

“I apologize, Dean,” says something that’s definitely not Sam, “but my ability to rearrange Sam’s memories is limited.  The human mind can only be altered so many times before it begins to disintegrate.  I assumed you didn’t want me to cause permanent brain damage.”  Dean makes a sound of disgust but has nothing to say.  “I couldn’t safely reset Sam every time he became suspicious, so I had to find others ways to manage him.  I didn’t see the harm in allowing him to plot with Kevin against you.  He had no intention to hurt you, and when the trap was sprung he’d be proven wrong.  As he has been.  Once Sam is convinced he was mistaken, he’ll persuade the boy.  Kevin is hidden in his bedroom waiting for him even now.”

“Why the fuck is Kevin here?”  Dean says.  He doesn’t look directly at not-Sam when he speaks.  “I told you to stay away from him.  I took him to another freaking state.  How’d you even get your creepy angel hands on him?”    

“I didn’t.  He came back here of his own accord.  As I said, Sam has been plotting with him.  And now that they’ve been shown their fears were false we should have the benefit of a little time before they regroup.”

There’s isn’t a shred of Sam in the military straightness of the creature’s back or the alien tilt of its head.  And it was in there all along.  Walking in the woods, playing cards in the library, talking late at night in Kevin’s bedroom.  Whenever he’d felt safest the monster had been there, inches away.  Two hours ago he’d been in its lap.

“Time?” Dean says.  “The jig is up, man.  What the hell am I supposed to tell Sam now?  That he’s crazy?”

“That seems unnecessarily dramatic.”

 Before Dean can answer Kevin steps out from behind the car.  “Hey,” he says.  “Hey, Sam.”  Dean and not-Sam both turn, startled.  The angel takes a step toward him, just as he’d hoped.  Kevin drops the match.

If Ezekiel—surely Sam’s hijacker is Ezekiel—is surprised to find himself in a ring of holy fire, it doesn’t show on Sam’s face.   He turns to Dean.  “I assume this was _your_ plan?”

“No,” Kevin says.  It takes courage to talk to Ezekiel, even knowing he’s trapped.  “I wanted a Plan B if Sam couldn’t trick Dean into the first circle.  And I had to stick around anyway in case I needed to use this.”  He holds up the gun.  “Angel sword bullets.”

Ezekiel eyes it warily.  “I see.”  He turns back to Dean.  “This changes nothing.  Sam will die if you cast me out.”

“What’s he talking about?” Kevin asks Dean.  “How did he even get in there without Sam knowing?  I thought you had to say yes.”

“Sam was dying,” Dean says.  He’s pissed, like Kevin’s the one who’s done something wrong.  “Zeke’s healing him from the inside.   He’s the only life support system that works.  I did what I had to do.”

“We obtained his consent through deception,” Ezekiel says.  “It was unfortunate, but necessary.  As was my deception today.”  He looks almost prim.

“So if I do the exorcism Sam’s going to die?” Kevin says.  He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do here.  He can’t imagine any set of circumstances where it would be acceptable to let this thing keep riding his friend, or to turn it loose in the bunker again.  But he also doesn’t want to kill Sam.    

“Yes,” says Ezekiel.

“Exorcism?” says Dean.  “You can’t do that.”  He starts walking toward Kevin.  “Why don’t you give me the gun?” he says carefully.  And in that moment Kevin knows he doesn’t want Dean to have it.  He backs away.

“You did this to him,” Kevin says.  “You turned him into that.  And then you let us think we were crazy for weeks. You let us think we were going to die.  You let it into the bunker.  It was in my bedroom.”  He looks at Ezekiel.  “I want to talk to Sam.”

“Sam would tell you to cast me out.  Even if it cost him his life.”  Kevin and Dean both stop in their tracks.

“That was honest,” Kevin says.  It feels like a trick, but he has no idea how.

“If I’d played the part of Sam and told you not to perform the exorcism, would you have believed it was him?”  Ezekiel sounds weary.

“No,” Kevin says. 

“Then what purpose would it have served?”

Dean starts moving toward Kevin again.  “Come on.  He’s my brother.  Take a walk and let me deal with this.” 

“Stay away from me.”  Kevin wants it to come out as a command, but his voice sounds panicky even to his own ears.  He points the gun in Dean’s general direction.  Dean doesn’t even blink.  A gun the other person doesn’t believe you’ll use is the same as no gun at all. 

“What else are we going to do?” Kevin asks, and he really wants to know.  “That fire’s going to burn out eventually.  Even if Ezekiel doesn’t murder us the first chance he gets, we can’t let him run around the bunker anymore.  It’s got the most powerful magic on earth.  You can’t just hand over the One Ring to some random guy.  We don’t know who he is or what he wants.  And by the way, Sam’s still in there.  Just because we can’t hear him screaming doesn’t mean he’s not.”  His mom was catatonic for two days after she had Crowley inside her, and that had only lasted ten minutes.

“All I want is to save my brothers,” Ezekiel says, and his voice sounds almost human in its desperation.  “They’re lost in the aether, they’re suffering and dying by the thousands.  If I’d wanted to harm you, you’d be dead a hundred times over.  It’s the library I need.  The angel tablet is worthless.  It was created by Metatron and says only what he wants known.  But the library contains so much ancient wisdom.  With it I know we could retake Heaven.  Grant me a few more months.  I’ll share with his consciousness as before, and once I go home I’ll have no need of a vessel.  By then he should be fully healed.  I truly believe he may die if I leave him now.”

Kevin takes note of that ‘may,’ but it’s still a hell of gamble.  “What happens when he takes the wheel?  Even if I don’t say the exorcism, if he really wants you gone it’ll be the first thing out of his mouth.”

“The sigils don’t work on angel who’s inside you.  He won’t remember any of this.”  There’s a horrible innocence to the way Ezekiel says it.  He really does think it’s reassuring.

“That’s really fucked up,” Kevin says.  And that’s what decides it for him, more than who’s using the bunker for what purpose, or even whether Sam’s going to live or die.  This is really fucked up, and it needs to stop right now.

Dean must see the decision in Kevin’s eyes, because he pounces.  Kevin lands hard on his back, and almost loses his grip on the gun.  He elbows Dean in the throat and manages to push him partway off, until Kevin’s sitting up and Dean’s kneeling over him.  Dean grabs for the gun, and Kevin doesn’t let go.  There’s a terrifying instant where they both have it in their hand, pulling in opposite directions.  When it goes off it’s the loudest sound Kevin’s ever heard.  He doesn’t even know who’s been shot, or where.  All he knows is that Dean lets go of the gun.  Kevin snatches it away and runs like hell toward the back of the garage.

“Fuck!” Dean says.  “Fucking hell.”  He looks down at the blood soaking his left leg.  He pokes at his thigh and then clamps his hand over it.  He starts limping toward Kevin like he still thinks he can catch him, a trail of blood smeared behind his feet.

“I told you to stay away from me!” Kevin screams.  He just shot somebody over this exorcism.  If he wasn’t certain before he’s sure as hell committed now.  He starts shouting the words while ducking in between the cars.  Sam’s body starts to glow. 

“Don’t do it,” Dean says, but he sounds like he’s already given up.  Kevin’s talking as fast as he can without losing the words Cas taught him, tongue turning sharp corners around a language he doesn’t understand.  When he hits the final line there’s a flash of light and Sam falls to the ground.

Kevin can run to Sam faster than Dean can.  Sam’s skin is cold to the touch, but he’s breathing shallowly.  “He’s alive,” he says to Dean, who’s still limping painfully over.  “Help me get him into the car and I’ll drive you both to the hospital.”

“I’ll drive him to the hospital,” Dean says quietly.  “Don’t fucking touch him.  Get out.”

Kevin doesn’t know how Dean manages to load Sam into the backseat alone, but he does it.  The Impala peels out of the garage, her headlights still blacked out from smoke. 

Kevin’s not sure if Dean meant he should get out of the garage or out of the bunker, but he’s not inclined to wait around to find out.  If Sam dies Dean’s going to kill him.  He needs to be gone.  He grabs his backpack and runs through the bunker, trying to decide what to take with him.  What he needs most is money, and he can’t find any cash.  He starts stealing everything that’s not tied down, a silver candlestick, a gold lighter, Sam’s laptop.  And pills, of course.  Pills most of all.  When he’s done the backpack has one change of clothes and weighs sixty pounds.

He throws it over his shoulder and stares at the front door.  He remembers stepping on Sam’s feet the first day they went outside.  Crowley’s minions are still out there, and so are Abaddon’s.  And now Ezekiel is out there too, lost in limbo, watching and plotting.  Ezekiel’s clever, and he’s gotten hold of a body twice already.  He’ll do it again.  And he’ll come for Kevin when he does.  Kevin imagines the ten mile walk into town through the cold, angel-haunted darkness.  He imagines city streets teeming with people who probably aren’t demons, but might be.  He imagines charming, helpful people with dead eyes and terrible white smiles.  He imagines spending the winter in an abandoned house where the hail falling through the broken roof clicks against the floor like claws all night long, and the air is so cold his toes blister black.

He turns around, walks to his bedroom, and curls up in his closet.  Dean may kill him, and then again he may not.  Either option is better than what’s waiting for him outside.

*******************************************************************************************************

Kevin loses track of time for a while after that.  Without the Winchesters around to set the rhythm of life there’s just the ceaseless pulse of ancient gears and black magic, rustling like whispers in the dark.  He doesn’t even bother to read the tablet anymore, although he cradles it close to him like a child.  He loves it for its jealousy.  It won’t let him belong to anything else.  He needs to believe that right now. 

He spends hours with his eyes shut, retracing his memories, looking for seams in the fabric.  He picks at the threads surrounding his rescue by Metatron.  It seems like such an improbable bit of luck.  Maybe it never happened.  Maybe he’s still on Crowley’s houseboat, suffering through infinite iterations of the same mind games.  Maybe it all went pear-shaped long before that.  Maybe he was never a sixteen-year-old AP student who played the cello and wanted to be president.  Those feel like someone else’s memories, and there’s no one left in the world who can tell him otherwise.  He worries Sam is dead.  He worries Sam has been dead for months and Kevin was friends with a puppet made out of his corpse.  He worries there was never anybody named Sam.

When he finally falls asleep he dreams there are snakes under his skin.  They squirm in ridges through the sinews of his arms and legs and form a pulsing knot in his belly.  He vomits them up in an endless, slimy stream of green and black.  He claws at his flesh until it tears away in bloody strips but he can’t get deep enough, so he picks up one of his knives and cuts them out, peeling apart muscles and veins and nerves, unravelling himself until his body’s a bloody ruin.  And the snakes are still inside. 

He wakes up retching.  He’s sure there’s something inside him, wriggling through his intestines and wrapping around his heart.  For an instant he considers it:  cutting himself open and digging out whatever angel or demon or snake has crawled inside.  And then his head clears and he’s struck with the horror of what he's thinking.  He snatches up all the knives in his closet and hides them in strategic locations around the bunker.  He hides the angel gun too.  When he’s done there’s nothing sharp left in his bedroom.  He doesn’t want to give up the few weapons he has, but the dreamed memory of slicing through his own meat is too vivid to ignore.  He’d rather die at someone else’s hand than gut himself while he’s half-asleep.

And so he’s unarmed when he hears footsteps in the hall.  He strains to catch the sound of voices, but none reach him.  The footsteps stop at his room and come inside.

“You in here?”  Dean’s voice says.

“I have a gun.”  It’s a lie.  Kevin’s gun is taped behind a ceiling tile in the supply closet.

“I don’t.”  Dean sounds almost amused.  “Come on out and we’ll talk.”

Kevin hears the scrape of his desk chair being pulled back.  He cracks the closet door and sees Dean sitting in it.  His left leg’s bandaged up.

“How’s Sam?”  Kevin says.

Dean raises his eyes to the ceiling in a gesture of long-suffering.  “Fine, I guess.  Fine enough to check himself out against medical advice yesterday and disappear, anyway.  Looked for him all over the state and couldn’t track him down.”

“He left without me?” Kevin says.  It cuts him deeper than he would’ve guessed.  He’d thought they were in this together.

Dean looks at him shrewdly.  “Yeah,” he says finally. “Get used to it.  It’s the Sam Winchester special.”

“How’s your leg?”  Kevin’s half-afraid to hear it’s going to be sawn off.  He’s still pissed at Dean, and more than a little scared of him, but he doesn’t want to be responsible for something like that.

Dean seems pleased he asked.  “Me?  I’ve walked off worse than this.  Lucky for me you missed the femoral artery, Annie Oakley.  Didn’t even hit the bone.  I’ll be good as new in a couple of months.” 

There’s a silence and Dean looks thoughtful.  “And listen, about what happened, I get why you freaked out.  I mean, I probably would have too if that had been dropped on me.  And the way it shook out is Sam’s all right and I’m all right.  I meant what I said to you before about you being family, so—“

Kevin studies Dean from the recesses of his closet.  He feels anger pull tight in his chest like a rubber band and snap.  “Are _you_ forgiving _me_?  After letting me make friends with that monster, after leaving me alone with it day after day? After it fucked with my head, and touched me, and did God knows what to me that I can’t even remember?  Are _you_ forgiving _me_?”  Outrage is warm after so many days of cold fear.

“You know what, fuck you too,” Dean says, getting up.  “You didn’t have to make the call when Sam was dying, I did.  And the second it looked like you might get hurt I did everything I could to get you out the line of fire.  You’re the one who snuck back here from Branson and put yourself in the middle of it.  You’re a selfish son of a bitch who almost got Sam killed.  Hide in your damn closet forever for all I care.”  He storms out as fast as he can on his bum leg.

Kevin waits until he hears Dean’s footsteps retreat, and then calls Sam on his cell phone.  It goes directly to voicemail.  “Hey, man,” Kevin says, “where are you?  Are you okay?  Because I kind of thought you weren’t going to ditch me again.  Call me.” 

Kevin keeps calling in the days that follow, but Sam never calls back.  Not after the messages when Kevin worries Sam’s dead, or the messages when Kevin gets drunk and cusses him out, not even after the message he leaves at 3am when he tries to talk himself out of the idea that snakes are living inside his rib cage until the phone stops recording. 

Kevin’s pretty sure Sam’s not taking Dean’s calls either, because in spite of Dean’s ‘fuck you,’ he keeps trying to win Kevin over.  He cajoles Kevin to go with him to the grocery store or Lebanon’s one real bar.  Kevin says no.  The world is full of monsters.  He’s not going outside for anything anymore.   Dean brings home things he thinks Kevin will like from his solitary trips—new video games for the Xbox or vegan brownies and tofu hot dogs.  Kevin accepts them without comment.

One night Dean makes the mistake of reaching into Kevin’s closet when he’s asleep, and Kevin bites through the meat of his hand until his teeth hit bone.  Dean shrieks and curses.  Kevin would prefer not to be touched, thank you.  Ever again.  Dean seems to get it after that.

He repairs the drawing on his chest every day, carefully retracing the blurred lines.  He doesn’t shower for two weeks, until finally he can’t stand the smell of himself anymore.  He starts to cry when the ink washes away down the drain, but his own feelings seem melodramatic and pointless, like he's watching them happen to someone else.  He’s wrestled them into submission by the time he gets out.  He considers redrawing the lines, but the thought of the hours it would take to draw something so elaborate onto his own chest, working backwards from a mirror, defeats him.  What’s the point?  It’s just ink.  Anyone who cared enough could pin him down and scrub it off.  He wouldn’t even remember afterwards it had happened. 

Kevin isn’t sure how much time passes before Sam finally comes back to the bunker.  He sleeps even less than he used to, and he’s stopped living by the twenty-four hour day.  His best guess is that it’s been a couple of months, although it might be more like half a year.  He doesn’t know what happened between the Winchesters, what was said or done to make things right between them.  He doesn’t much care.  Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with him.    

Dean announces Sam’s return with a seriousness that barely disguises childish glee.  He points at Kevin.  “Don’t be a dick to him.”  Kevin waits for Sam to come find him, but for almost a day he doesn’t even hear Sam’s voice.

Sam finally appears in the doorway of Kevin’s bedroom the next evening.  Kevin’s lying on his mattress watching reruns of _Law & Order_ on an old TV he’s hooked up with rabbit ears.  He has a hard time following a lot of TV shows these days, but the familiar rhythms of _Law & Order_ are still manageable.  He can feel Sam’s eyes prickle on his skin, but Sam doesn’t speak, and Kevin wills himself not to look up until the show goes to commercial.

Dean didn’t prepare him for how bad Sam looks.  He’s lost all the weight he’d gained back in the weeks after the Trials, and he’s hollow-eyed and pale.  He looks like he did the last time Kevin saw him before the washout at the church.  Kevin feels a twinge of guilt.

“You look like death warmed over,” he says.

“So do you,” Sam replies.  “Are you okay?”

Kevin shrugs noncommittally.  “I guess.  Are you?  You’re not, like, coughing up blood or anything, right?”

“Not really.”  Sam hangs in the doorway uneasily.  “And even if I was, you still did the right thing.  Thank you.”  Kevin doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.  He’s not sure he was thinking about right and wrong at the time. 

After a moment Sam adds, “And I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.  I was working through some stuff.”  Kevin still doesn’t answer.  He thinks that’s a shitty explanation, but he doesn’t honestly believe complaining about it will get him a better one.  Sam turns to go.  

“Was any of it real?” Kevin says.  Sam turns back.  “That guy I hung out with all those weeks, was it you or him?  Or both?”

Sam takes a step into the room.  “It was real.  I remember all of it.”  And then he hesitates.  “At least I think I do.”

Kevin studies him uneasily.  “So when you picked me up at the bus station, that was you?” 

“Yeah,” Sam says, and thank Christ for that.

“And when you showed me the card tricks?”’

Sam smiles.  “Yeah.”

“And when you sent me the video clip?”

Sam looks at him blankly and Kevin’s heart sinks.  It’s a ten second video clip, but the grief that wells up in his chest makes the loss of it feel like a death.

“What was it?” Sam says.

 Kevin takes a deep breath and gets his emotions under control.  “Nothing.  Just, you were in a city, and you sent it to me so I could see where you were.  That it was real.  Or I guess not you.  Him.”

“Can I see it?”  Sam takes the phone from Kevin’s hand gingerly.  Dean must have warned him about the biting.

Sam watches the video with his brow furrowed and then hands back the phone.  “I don’t know,” he says.  “I lost some of my memories around the mind wipes.  Maybe I did send you this.  It seems like something I’d do.  I think?  But I can’t tell you for sure.  I’m sorry.”

Kevin bows his head.  “Yeah, okay.  It’s not like it’s your fault.”  And it’s not, but it still hurts.  Not just the loss of that one particular moment, but of all the other moments when what he’d thought was Sam might have been something else entirely.

Sam stands over Kevin’s mattress in silence for a minute, like he’s trying to think of something else to say.  Neither of them comes up with anything.  “Okay,” Sam says finally, “I just wanted to check in on you.  I’ll leave you alone now.”

The NBC affiliate has switched over to the nightly news, and the leviathan playing the president is making a speech about healthcare. 

“Hey,” Kevin says before Sam can disappear, “what do you think of this?”  Kevin couldn’t care less—he’s never going to leave the bunker again, so he’s sure as hell never going to have health insurance—but Sam always has an opinion about politics, and it offers him a reason to stay.

Sam looks immensely grateful.  He sits down in the desk chair, which is about as far away as it’s possible to get from Kevin and still be in the same room.  And that’s just fine.  Kevin doesn’t need anybody in his personal space right now.  Especially Sam.

“So,” Sam says, and gestures toward the TV, “it’s kind of complicated.”

Kevin bets it is.     

 


End file.
